Anritsu Corporation announces plans for expanding the company’s Universal Wireless Test Set MT8870A software to support the new 3GPP 5G Sub-6 GHz New Radio (NR) RF measurement standards

TT Correspondent | | 01 Feb 2018

Anritsu Corporation announces plans for expanding the company’s Universal Wireless Test Set MT8870A software to support the new 3GPP5G Sub-6GHz New Radio(NR) RF measurement standards. Using the developed 5G Sub-6GHz NR UplinkTx Measurement and Downlink Waveform File software options will support non-signalling based 5G Sub-6GHzTRx tests.

With a seamless frequency band up to 6 GHz and a bandwidth of 160 MHz as standard features, the advanced MT8870A platform does not require hardware upgrades to support the 3GPP 5G Sub-6GHz defined test conditions, enabling users to expand functions for 5G Sub-6GHz NR while minimizing upgrade cost risks.

The MT8870A is a popular tester for mobile devices, featuring industry-best measurement speeds and customized turnkey solutions. Adding support for 5G Sub-6 GHz NR measurements will help play a key role in smoothing deployment of advanced cellular wireless technologies.

[Development Background]
In response to 3GPP Release 15 announced in December 2017, which defines the 5G NR standards, national telecom operators are targeting early 2019 for rollout of commercial 5G services and have announced an accelerated timetable for practical trials.

Although the 3GPP 5G NR standard defines use of frequency bands up to 52.6GHz, early deployments will be focused on the Sub-6GHz spectrum (frequency band below 6 GHz), which has the merit of offering services with frequencies near 4G LTE, such as mobility and wide area coverage, where 5G is expected to play the main role until around 2020. Support for this Sub-6 GHz standard is expected to be the first step for vendors of 5G devices, such as smartphones.

[Product Outline]
The Universal Wireless Test Set MT8870A is a measurement platform for mass-production of various wireless communications equipment and modules. The main unit accommodates four high-performance test units, each operating completely independently to perform measurements of up to four pieces of wireless equipment or modules in parallel. Adding the released software expands the MT8870A functions to support the 5G Sub-6GHz tests defined by 3GPP Release 15 (Tx power, frequency, modulation accuracy, Rx sensitivity, etc.) with automatic, fast measurements.